


a last note from your narrator

by mischief7manager



Category: Critical Role (Web Series)
Genre: Character Study, Death, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-09-22
Updated: 2017-09-22
Packaged: 2019-01-04 06:05:33
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 919
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/12163002
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mischief7manager/pseuds/mischief7manager
Summary: "(Here is a question: which story is true?)(Here is an answer: a mask says nothing. Not even the truth.)"There are many stories told about the Raven Queen.





	a last note from your narrator

**Author's Note:**

> i have No Idea what this is, but i kind of love it anyway. spoilers through 104.

Here is a story.

There was once a woman, and she was beautiful, and as is always true in stories, beautiful was a dangerous thing for her to be. She was beautiful when she lived, and she was beautiful when she died, and so beautiful was she that the god of death plucked her soul from eternity and gave her form and took her for his consort.

(In addition to beautiful, she was wise and powerful, a sorcerer-queen of great renown. But most stories leave out that part.)

Here is a story. The woman grew jealous of her husband’s power and killed him, usurping control of Death for herself and those few she deemed worthy of her mercy. She undid his works and cast him down, creating a new realm where she might rule eternal and erasing all knowledge of her mortal being, that she might have the power to ensure that she would be remembered no longer as human but as divine.

Here is a story. The woman grew sickened by her husband’s abuses and killed him, releasing control of Death for those wretched souls held imprisoned in the afterlife. She undid his works and cast him down, creating a new realm where the dead might be at peace and sacrificing all knowledge of her mortal being, that she might have the power to protect those now under her dominion even at the cost of her own self.

(Here is a question: which story is true?)

(Here is an answer: a mask says nothing. Not even the truth.)

 

* * *

 

The gods are not all powerful.

This surprised her, once, she thinks. The idea of limitations on godhood seems to be an inherent contradiction; divinity without omnipotence.

(Of course, there was also a time when she thought gods couldn’t be killed.)

(There was a time when she did not realize she had the power to make gods afraid of her.)

She sees clearer in her own divinity. To ascribe limitless power to gods is to strip power from mortals, which, in turn, removes their ability to believe in the gods. There can be no faith without capacity for doubt. To make gods capable of forcing belief is to rob belief of any meaning.

There are moments, she finds, when she is powerless. When her divinity and her agency is worthless, and the fate of the planes rests on a single mortal choice.

( _Take me instead, you Raven bitch._ )

(A new-spun thread glows gold.)

 

* * *

 

Her Champion is afraid of her.

He wasn’t, at first. In the beginning, he had nothing in him but anger, burning in his heart. He defied her claim on his sister and offered himself in her place. It was only later he began to realize what that meant.

She does not want his fear. She does not feed on fear, not as others of her divine brethren do. (Not as her godly husband did when he took her as his bride.) Many mortals fear her, true, and she is, for the most part, indifferent to it. Fear of death is but one consequence of being alive, one to which she has grown accustomed over the years.

But fear from worshipers or servants is not the same as fear from her Champion.

Thrice his sister falls beneath death’s shadow, and thrice is she returned. Slowly, _slowly_ , her Champion’s fear is diminished, from biting panic to reverential awe. When he comes to her realm a second time, speaking of undead magics and would-be gods, there is fear in him. Fear for his family, for his people, for all those facing the devastation of this Undying King. There is no fear left in him for himself.

( _You have such loneliness in your eyes._ )

( _My beautiful thing_ , she calls him, and does not say, _You know nothing of being alone._ )

 

* * *

 

Here is a story.

There was once a ( _woman_ ) ( _witch_ ) ( _she-devil_ ) ( _goddess_ ) and she _(found_ ) ( _stole_ ) ( _seduced_ ) ( _set free_ ) a young man, and he became her ( _slave_ ) _(soldier_ ) ( _paramour_ ) ( _Champion_ ), and it was ( _tragic_ ) ( _horrific_ ) ( _inevitable_ ) ( _good_ ).

Here is a story. The Mother of Ravens rules over the transition between life and death, but it is only one death in a century that sees her presence. It is said she comes for kings and emperors, high priests and heroes, those whose names are writ in myth and legend long after all who knew them have passed on.

Here is a story. There is a figure to the Queen’s right hand, one that moves in shadows and whispers, one that few have seen and fewer still have known. The Raven’s Consort, it is said, has many duties: to hunt down necromancers and those who pervert the laws of life and death, to carry tidings to the Queen’s servants and those who do her work, to defend her realm from evildoers and those who seek the Queen’s destruction.

Here is a story. It is said that there are those whom the Raven’s Consort takes in death in his own hands. There is no consensus in the stories of who draws his attention or why he chooses those few souls: warriors cut down in battle, nobles passing after a lifetime of just rule, children lost to sickness before their lives had even a chance to bloom. All the stories have in common is this: those the Consort takes, it is said, are never afraid.

Here is a story. Mortals are afraid of the act of dying. There is nothing to be feared in death.


End file.
